My life with Frank Zappa - the most eccentric man in rock

PAULINE BUTCHER wants to make it clear she was never Frank Zappa’s groupie.

She admits being attracted to the eccentric, moustachioed avant-garde American rock star who became her unorthodox and charismatic employer for four years.

Yet some 40 years on the demure brunette sips mineral water and recalls: “Unlike other men he seemed interested in what I had to say. He focused on me as a person.

“He looked straight at me and paid me attention. He liked that I was intelligent and had opinions. In the late Sixties men were not interested in what a woman had to say. Women were seen as mere sex objects or dolly birds.”

In 1969 Pauline, who is now 65, abandoned her safe but dull suburban lower middle-class existence as a London agency typist to fly 3,000 miles to live and work as Frank’s secretary and assistant in his Californian hippy commune.

A year before the self-confessed “goody two shoes”, from Twickenham, Surrey, had been sent by her secretarial agency to London’s Royal Garden Hotel for two hours of typing work for a “Mr Zappa”. She was 21, working as a part-time model and still living with her mother. He meanwhile had already achieved success with his unconventional music having released his debut album Freak Out! three years before.

I was introduced to Eric Clapton but I didn’t know who he was. I even asked him what instrument he played.

Pauline

She had been expecting a short, fat middle-aged businessman and was surprised to find a swarthy singer, in his late 20s, in an orange T-shirt and pink trousers over the skinniest of bodies.

Pauline was asked to transcribe the bizarre, risqué lyrics of the latest album Absolutely Free by Frank and his group The Mothers Of Invention.

She was shocked by their explicit nature and told him so. Frank, who was used to adoring, unquestioning girls, was impressed by her spirit and invited her to London’s trendy Speakeasy club. There her naivety became apparent.

“I was introduced to Eric Clapton but I didn’t know who he was,” recalls Pauline. “I even asked him what instrument he played.

“Frank obviously fancied me and thought I would be there for the night with him. He was a bit sulky when I left without him. I was not tempted to stay. I was a girl from the suburbs and the Swinging Sixties did not really hit the suburbs. I was prim. I thought you didn’t just meet someone and sleep with them.”

Nevertheless she was fascinated by Frank and met him again after a concert in the UK in September. Four months later she rang him to ask for more secretarial work.

They met and he offered her a job working on a book he was writing. They would have to work closely together so she was invited to share his new home in the Hollywood Hills. Despite the fact he was married (to his long-suffering second wife Gail) and had a baby daughter they named Moon Unit he sealed the offer by moving in for a kiss and making a crude pass. Pauline declined.

Towards the end of her time working for him he tried once more but again she rejected him. He was a married man and Pauline was a nice English girl with morals. However that doesn’t mean she wasn’t tempted.

“I found him attractive. I’d never met anyone like him,” she says of Frank, who died of prostate cancer in 1993 aged 52. “He was a fascinating man, very commanding and intelligent but I did not want anything to happen.

“It makes a difference if you know the man’s wife as I did Gail. It would make it difficult for me to betray her.”

No such scruples bothered Frank who cheated on Gail, mother of his four oddly named children (Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet Emuukha Rodan and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen) with a string of women. “He was quite discreet but they were around,” says Pauline. “Gail tolerated it but was not allowed to have other men herself.”

Pauline assumed Frank would be living in a luxurious Hollywood house but the reality was different.

Her new home was a ramshackle log cabin left in disrepair by previous occupants. It was strewn with rubbish, furniture and litter and the carpet was stained and dirty. The place was full of Frank’s entourage of self-styled “freaks”, musicians, hangers-on and adoring females including Pam Zarubica, known as Suzy Creamcheese, and Cynthia Plaster Caster, who made casts of rock stars’ private parts. There she met Mick Jagger, his then girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, Rod Stewart, Jeff Beck, Linda Ronstadt and Captain Beefheart. Mick impressed Pauline with his intelligence but she says Rod and Jeff were “Jack the lad” boys.

“I was an incongruous figure,” she says. “I couldn’t believe I was living among pop stars in the hippy lifestyle, strange characters, freaks and all the women everywhere.

“I was removed from it all. I wrote 20-page letters home about it.”

Pauline had to scrub, clean and repaint her own filthy room but soon settled in. She helped run Frank’s fan club and later managed girl group The GTOs, who he was mentoring. Frank asked her to edit a book of diaries. Life was never dull but she was a prim fish out of psychedelic water.

“I stood out. I wasn’t

a freak or hippy. I wasn’t a groupie and I was very anti-drugs as was Frank. He was quite a conservative workaholic guy underneath.”

A fter four months Pauline moved out of the log cabin to live nearby but still worked for Frank until a serious ear condition forced her back to the UK. By this time she’d had enough of being one of his handmaidens and was a convert to the newly emerging Women’s Lib.

“My life had been reduced to being just a part of Frank’s circle,” she recalls. “I had to do something for myself. I applied to Cambridge. I met my husband there, had my son and started teaching and writing.” She taught A-level psychology before working on plays for Radio 4.

For 20 years she never talked of her life with Frank. “I wanted people to like me for myself,” she explains. “Not because I was linked to a famous person.”

This changed when she decided to write her memoir. Now based in Singapore with her banker husband Peter Bird she concedes: “It was my good fortune to meet Frank.

“He was an extraordinary man and he encouraged me. I reaped the benefits from knowing him, as it was an education of sorts. Now I want to be the heroine in my own show.”